Back-reflection X-ray crystallography method and system

Provided is a method and system for back-reflection X-ray diffraction of a specimen that yields the orientation of a crystalline sample in a quick and an automated way. The method includes setting an approximate pre-selected X-ray detector to specimen distance, subjecting the specimen to X-rays, recording the Laue diffraction pattern, calculating the Miller indices of a fraction of the spots in the resulting pattern, averaging the Miller indices, moving a virtual representation of the specimen by a small amount along a line connecting the film to the specimen, changing the film-to-specimen distance, repeating the calculation, averaging and moving in small angular steps until the virtual representation of the specimen has been moved through a small distance range and best fits to the observed data, and determining the optimum film-to-specimen distance resulting in the smallest average Miller index.